The Screen and the Stage

Film differs from theater in many ways beyond its lack of a live audience. Technological advances in post-production techniques and multimillion-dollar budgets give filmmakers the opportunity to make anything imaginable happen on-screen -- but the most meaningful moments in cinema often conjure their power from simple theatricality, taking cues from the actor's medium. Intense lighting, costuming, an articulate expression -- these moments are more relatable, more evocative of humanity than blue aliens created with motion-capture CGI could ever be. Film scholar Lutz Koepnick will dissect this concept, discussing how films and video art examine theatricality in Still Moving: The Orchestration of Vision and Time in Contemporary Filmmaking at 6:30 p.m. tonight at Steinberg Hall on the Washington University campus (Forsyth and Skinker boulevards, University City). The free lecture includes excerpts from films and videos by Francis Alys, Werner Herzog and Tsai Ming-Liang, to name a few. For more information, call 314-721-0072 or visit www.slam.org.
Mon., April 9, 2012